In general, during quality assurance, a product is inspected to detect defects. The product, for example, a disk, wafer, or media, may be one of many products that are inspected. Over the years, products have become smaller and continue to get smaller. Accordingly, their defects are also becoming smaller and more difficult to detect.
Defects may result from particle contaminants that are trapped on the surface of the product, e.g., a disk, wafer, media, etc. The trapped particle may damage the sputtered film of the product. Furthermore, particles may contaminate the finished surface and lead to scratch formation and debris generation. In a disk drive technology, defects such as particle contaminants may adversely impact the media head spacing.